Recent Headlines

Relatively few sexual assault cases in the military make it to court-martial.

This flouts basic precepts of justice.

Before that, injury is compounded by commanders who are ignorant or disrespectful of the rights, treatment and compassion due victims. This erodes claims the military might have to fairness and ethical behavior.

Sadly, an investigation published Sunday in the San Antonio Express-News adds another dimension.

These victims are not free from re-victimization even during the court-martial process.

There should be a reasonable expectation, when cases emerge from the military's gantlet of obstruction and neglect to court-martial, that all of those goals of justice, fairness and ethical behavior come together.

But as with so much about this tragic issue, what is reasonable to most is lost on much of the military.

Staff writers Karisa King and Sig Christenson wrote Sunday of sexual assault victims essentially left, pre-trial, to fend for themselves with defense attorneys.

These attorneys, in hours-long sessions at which the victims are unprepared and without counsel, then delve into sexual histories, quality of marriages and partying habits.

In one recent case, a defense attorney got a victim to sign a document saying that no “force” was used in her rape, though she was ignorant of the proper definition.

This cannot be excused as the vigorous defense to which every suspect is entitled. It has no parallel in the civilian world.

In both civilian and military systems, access to witnesses is assured.

And in both, victims can choose not to speak or limit what they say to defense attorneys. They can choose pre-trial not to relive the nightmare that is rape with those defending their assailants.

But in the civilian world, these sessions would generally not occur at all without prosecutors present.

In the military, there is even some debate about this right of refusal for victims to make themselves available to the defense.

Military prosecutors, this article reports, encourage victims to meet with the defense. In the military, a “request” from folks who outrank you naturally can take on added, more urgent, meaning.

Much of this can be chalked up to defense access to witnesses enshrined in law, military prosecutors who want to be as evenhanded as possible and, perhaps, to a military judicial system that is less adversarial than its civilian counterpart.

But at the least, victims should be prepped for these sessions with defense attorneys and advised of their legal rights beforehand.

Also with no parallel in the civilian world is the apparent wide latitude for defense attorneys to ask intrusive and irrelevant questions in evidentiary hearings.

These factors can combine to render the process just another violation for the victim.

The Air Force recognizes this. It now has a pilot program that provides lawyers for the victims.

This latest revelation is a follow-up on a seven-month Express-News investigation — “Twice Betrayed” by King — that exhaustively detailed other problems. Congress is now considering fixes, though punting so far on the most significant change needed — removing commanders' authority to determine which cases get criminally prosecuted.

Now add to the items in need of fixing: how victims are treated once those relatively rare cases make it to court-martial — 302 out of the 3,374 reports of sexual assaults last year.

Congress should require all military branches to provide counsel to sexual assault victims.

It should make clear its intolerance of a legal system misapplied to victimize sexual assault victims anew.

If a victim is left to wonder just who is being prosecuted, there can be little improvement in the 89 percent of victims who do not report assault. And there will be even less mystery why this rate exceeds the 65 percent of nonreporting in the civilian world.